Thursdays are now all about longform links on Abnormal Returns. You can check out last week’s linkfest including a look at how the pandemic has helped bring out ‘Peak Oil.’
Quote of the Day
"I am here to tell you that the reason so much of the world seems incomprehensible is that it IS incomprehensible. "
(Tim Maughan)
Book excerpts
- Skill and luck bump against each other in Maria Konnikova's book "The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win." (brainpickings.org)
- A Q&A with Anne Helen Petersen, author of "Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation." (vox.com)
- An excerpt from "Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace" by David G, Smith and W. Brad Johnson. (behavioralscientist.org)
- An excerpt from "They Just Seem a Little Weird: How KISS, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, and Starz Remade Rock and Roll" by Doug Brod. (variety.com)
Startups
- Paul Graham, "The best thing you can do in a YC interview is to teach the partners about your users." (paulgraham.com)
- Are female founders being held to a double standard? (fortune.com)
- You can't understand fintech if you don't understand APIs. (notboring.substack.com)
Environment
- Demands are only going to grow for the water from the Colorado River. (politico.com)
- Carbon offsets aren't worth the paper they are printed on. (bloomberg.com)
Pandemic
- Coronavirus vaccines were able to roll out quickly because of research done years before. (washingtonpost.com)
- The pandemic has upended agriculture with little support or publicity. (washingtonpost.com)
Giving
- Direct giving, via apps like Venmo, has taken off in pandemic. (onezero.medium.com)
- A big profile of chef José Andrés and World Central Kitchen, a disaster relief organization he founded. (huffpost.com)
Longreads
- Bloom Energy ($BE) was supposed to revolutionize energy production. It hasn't but it is still at it as a public company. (wsj.com)
- Much of the code that runs the financial system is written in COBOL. Programmers who know COBOL are a rapidly shrinking population. (wealthsimple.com)
- Not surprisingly the story behind who found Forrest Fenn's fortune is complicated and controversial. (outsideonline.com)
- If you can't tell cheap wine from expensive wine, what should you do? (kenthendricks.com)
- How the eBird app has changed birding culture. (outsideonline.com)
- The best business longreads from 2020 including 'Garbage Language.' (longreads.com)
- Why is 'The Office' still so popular? (newyorker.com)
